We all remember the San Marino Grand Prix in 05, and how ITV delivered this, with 3 laps to go Alonso & Schuey were contesting the lead only to have almost 3 minutes of adverts for the program to return with just a lap to go.

ITV were inundated with complaints and these were later upheld by OFCOM, who highlighted ITV had not followed their own rule book when it came to hosting sporting events.

If the BBC believe's it is no longer viable, Cost vs Viewers, then programming would have to return to having adverts.

Be interesting to see if this is a ploy in the world of cuts to scare Bernie into reducing the fees?

Champion Elect

This would be a disaster; I think I might well stop watching altogether if it went back to ITV. I remember Imola '05 very well indeed. On top of that, while watching on ITV we missed on average about 20%, one fifth (12 laps of Silverstone) of each race.
What made it even worse was that at every single ad break, either side of the actual adverts even more time was taken up by the ITV logo and the Sponsor's (mainly Sony) logo.

Champion Elect

So just a year after securing the rights to F1, presumably at great cost to the licence payer, the BBC are now looking to ditch it?
Does that mean they're not going to be showing it in HD this year to save money?
Still, at least without F1 they'll be able to show more of the far more useful programs such as Strictly Come Dancing and X Factor

ITV have recently posted some good financial figures for their last year, with programs like X Factor boosting Advertising revenues. But I can see F1 being a loss leader for anyone who picks it up, so you may have English viewers who find:

BBC have abandoned them
ITV don't want it as they can't see a positive on the outlay, knowing their form of revenue 'Adverts' goes against the F1 product itself..
C5 would only show it in a 60 minute format on Tuesday @ 3am.
& Channel 4 would want to seek out the controversy which would suit F1, but with their being no graphic sexual connotation it would pass.

So it would be over to ESPN, Motors TV or Dave which really doesn't bare thinking as the last 2 would only show 2 GP's the Monaco & British. The former would be interesting in the form of an Americanised presentation and also adverts.

Devil & the deep blue sea, this is all down to Money and we've talked about the F1 bubble popping for Bernie with tracks saying it's too expensive. So if TV stations are also saying the same, something will have to give! Don't fancy trying to watch it on a Albanian Web Site Feed......

Sidecar racers have the biggest cojones

Avatar for sale to the highest bidder

The advert free solution would unfortunately only be possible on a subscription channel only. Sky would pick the rights up but at an extra cost to the user if they were to broadcast the race and qualifying sessions advert free. Hopefully the BBC will see sense and keep their flagship sports program otherwise this could be the end of free to air F!.

Podium Finisher

For Sky I think we'd see ESPN, didn't Sky try a foray into F1 with multi feeds and driver cams and Martin Brundle once joked with Bernie on a grid walk that there were more cars on the grid than viewers to his Sky channel?

isn't dead.

Podium Finisher

isn't dead.

Thanks Pyrope - I think I knew ESPN was Disney, across the pond their website coverage of things like the NFL, MLB and other American sports is pretty damn good. I just thought Speed might've been incorporated for some reason! I would have less bone to pick if ESPN had some experience of F1 via Speed, although of course the ESPN in Europe is going to be a different entity to the one in the US.

I really hope F1 doesn't go to a subscription service, quite honestly, I can't see the logic of doing it. So much of it is based on sponsorship and brand recognition that I find it hard to imagine everyone, the teams included, would keep paying the bills if the sponsors felt their money wasn't going out to enough of an audience. And there would be a cut in audience, a significant one, considering the highest rated sports event this year, on Sky Sports, was the Chelsea v. Liverpool match on the 6th February, with 2.69 million viewers. Sky Sports News had an audience of 571,000, so we can say 3.2 million people were interested in watching football or at least interested in the sport.

The F1 ratings must at least have an average of 3m viewers over the course of each race, if not 4m, since several races I believe went into the high 4s or low 5s. I don't know for sure, but I will do some number crunching on this later if anyone's interested.

Meanwhile, Match of the Day - on the same date as the Sky Sports rating given (6th February), got 5.32 million viewers in (not sure if this is peak or average), which would obviously indicate, unexpectedly, that the desire for football is far greater than F1 across all channels, and while one there is one mitigating factor - 6th February was the day where more goals were scored than ever before in a day - it definitely shows that if F1 were to cross over to, say, Sky, the ratings would reduce dramatically. At least, in my opinion. And the last time I checked, the role of advertising your company in F1 was that it helped as many people as possible see your brand.

World Champion

Podium Finisher

You just know it's not going to happen, would be interesting how Bernie would take if during the season we start hearing the rumours that the BBC may pull it's coverage, ITV are not interested, what would he do? Does he care enough to have TV in the UK, he's never thought much of his own country GP, I doubt he's worried about £40 Million against what must be a massive fund from other TV broadcasters?

#dejavu

Sorry, Spesh, he would. His strategy is to have the advertising beamed to as many people as possible hence the advertisers pay the fees - if he was going for the highest possible TV money he'd already have UK F1 coverage on Sky.

It isn't worth it for Sky anyway, theres only 20 races a season; probably not that much extra revenue and a slot that would interfere with them broadcasting Super Sunday football marathons.

I stand by Bernie wanting it free to air in as many big countries as possible so he can charge top dollar to his sponsors.